MAROONED

You’re having the time of your life! You’re drinking, smoking and hooking up with no regard to any future consequences whatsoever. You fall down on your bed, next to an unbelievably hot girl (or guy, depending on your perspective/sexual orientation), and right as you’re about to get down and dirty, you get distracted.namely, by a very distinctive BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!-your alarm clock.

Yes, it was all a dream, and yes, it’s time to go to class. As fun as the weekend might have been, it’s now time to get out of bed and down to the LC to listen to your professor drone on about molecular biology (or Shakespearean prose, depending on your major). Yes, Friday’s a distant memory, and Monday’s knocking on your door.

And so the process of finding parking begins, whether you’re a commuter student or live on campus and are just lazy. You get into your car, start the ignition and drive toward campus, only to encounter a massive amount of traffic. You encounter teenagers slamming their brakes in response to green lights and octogenarians rapidly switching lanes (and in the process cutting you off) to reach the farmer’s market-and you skillfully (and miraculously) evade them until you reach campus.

But once here, you quickly realize another problem: Every single student who had class at the same time you happened to beat you to every single parking space; all the parking lots are filled to the brim with cars and mini-vans. You check the Memorial parking lot-full. The Wellness Center parking lot, the Mahoney/Pearson parking garage, the Ponce parking garage-all full. The Pavia parking garage-lo behold! There’s a parking space! Unfortunately, you have to park your measly little Accord between a Suburban and an Expedition.

You park your car and turn off the ignition. For the next 10 minutes, you struggle to find a way to squeeze out of your parking spot, considering you’re parked between two tanks. Then, sprint toward your class like you’ve never sprinted before, only to reach your classroom and find out your class has been cancelled.

You stop, read the note and take a deep breath-at least you didn’t lose much by not making said class, right? Wrong. You walk back to your car, only to find a $40 ticket hanging onto your windshield for parking in a resident area with a commuter permit-or is it for parking in a commuter area with a resident permit? You can’t tell now and probably never will. You yank the ticket from your windshield and stash it in the glove compartment before driving home and taking a long needed siesta.

Jay Rooney is a junior majoring in journalism and history. He can be contacted at j.rooney@umiami.edu..

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The Miami Hurricane is the student newspaper of the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. The newspaper is edited and produced by undergraduate students at UM and is published weekly in print on Tuesdays during the regular academic year.